Courthouse News Service: Woman Locked in a Men’s Prison

COMPOUNDING damage already done by an Hawaiian prison system that locked her up in a gaol for men, the Courthouse News Service reports personal medical information about intersex woman Dione Kaeo-Tomaselli:

A hermaphrodite who underwent surgery to become a woman claims Hawaii incarcerated her in a men’s prison where she was, predictably, raped. The 33-year-old woman says the state locked her up in its largest men’s prison despite her repeated protests during intake that she is a woman. …

According to her complaint, Kaeo-Tomaselli had a sex change operation in 1998 to change from hermaphrodite to woman. (Hermaphrodites are born with both ovarian and testicular tissue, because their tissues have failed to fully differentiate – one to regress and the other to fully express – during gestation. Most medical experts have replaced the stigmatized term with “intersex,” which describes a family of sexual development disorders. Hermpahroditism is common in plants and invertebrates.) …

Editorial comment:

WE hope Ms Kaeo-Tomaselli’s legal council reads the Courthouse News. If so perhaps Mr Wilkerson can add prurient gossip, breach of privacy and derogating disclosure of medical information to his list of charges.

Whatever her original crime, Dione Kaeo-Tomaselli should have expected better from the Hawaiian state justice system than she received.